So when the UK sleeps, we know you other MNers are out there part II

[tadjennyp]

I was looking for thumbwitch's recipe for that cake and found the old thread has disappeared so Linzer and I thought we'd resurrect it!

Yes - I am just ignoring footlong, he's obviously looking for an argument and doesn't seem to have anything sensible to add!

Anyway it's nine pm here, just watched the last miner coming up, I'm off to bed (dc's usually wake me at least once in the night and again any time between 5 and 6am....)

Enjoy your Australian day (I think it's Australia anyway!)

sure is Australia - it's an odd day today, muggy hot but quite a cold breeze - makes dressing appropriately bloody hard!

Best thing to do, ignore him - I keep wanting to tell people to not engage with him but then he turns on me as well and it derails the threads. Soon enough, enough people will realise he's a troublemaker and ignore him, I hope.

hi, just signing in here.

stranded - is your life as exotic & just like a permanent holiday as i imagine it to be?

i have this dream of finding somewhere idyllic, which is incredibly cheap to live (so i can afford an amazing house & servants), and where i can get home easily, but it's not over run with tourists, where it's really rural, but still has internet & reliable electricity, there's loads of lovely plant life & birds, animals etc, but no nasty creepy crawlies. oh, and perfect weather, and a city with great shops & entertainment/museums etc, just a couple of hours' drive away.

somehow, i think the caribbean is meant to be like that, but i've never been. (except for the city part)

please, tell me you live this lifestyle, even if it's not true!

dh & i went to chicago for the day on mon - we got all cultured & went to the institute of art, before shopping, food, and a concert, then drove home in the middle of the night.

tis the first time we've done that since moving here - used to be able to leave dd with my sis & go to london, but now we rely on babysitters. i paid a couple of teenagers (they live either side of us, their parents were on 'emergency' back-up call)to stay overnight at our house. i was vv nervous, but it all worked well - so well, that the teens got themselves up & off to school before i got up. i didn't even hear them.

hullo, thumb - I'm in the US, pacific northwest. We're almost as far away, time-wise, from the UK as you can get before you start coming back around again.

Good to hear some nice teen stories.

Didn't realise FL was a man, explains some things.

The Caribbean sounds very appealing at the moment stranded! I'm also of your trip to Chicago kickass. I could do with a bit of culture and the time to enjoy it without the dcs. My time will come again, I'm sure.

Unless you go to Hawaii marenmj which is even further back! How is life up in Washington State?

That's true tadjennyp

Life here is slow. DH is in crunch and working until 10-11 most nights. I'm losing what little motivation I had left to work on my projects after morning sickness and just chugging along.

grrr just seen FL on the birth trauma thread

agree Caribbean sounds lovely

Does this mean congratulations are in order marenmj? When are you due?

Thanks - near as I can guess we're mid-April 2011, so tax time. One Christmas baby and one tax baby . I've had a 12-week scan. We estimated mid-April and they saw no reason to change it based on the scan, so I guess there we go.

I had hyperemesis into the 7th month last time, so even though I am 14 weeks I have no hope that it will let up any time soon.

oh marenmj, that's horrible! I mean the hyperemesis, of course, the baby part is wonderful - congratulations!

I'm the MNer in the Indian Ocean

marenmj are you on the April ante-natal thread? There are so many if us I get lost! I expect we're due within about a week of each other.

ah frakkin, hello! course you are, silly me - great name for Hallowe'en there!

At least I know what to expect, as much as one can

Frakken, I'm not on the ante-natal thread. I think I tried to do that with DD1 and it completely zoomed out from under me. Have you started to show yet? I had to switch to maternity clothes already and I'm pretty sure I hadn't this early on last time!

Nope! But first baby and I'm a bit of a gym addict so I'm not expecting to show any time soon :(

Which is possibly a good thing as I haven't told work yet...

Ah, well, baggy clothes then . I think I hid mine from work until the 18th week or so, although I did tell my immediate supervisor as soon as I found out so they wouldn't ding me for being sick all the time.

I have no fat and short torso so was poking out pretty early (I thought) last time at about five months. Although I weigh less now at three months, I think I am about as rotund as I was last time at five. My fault really. I had some leftover abdominal separation that I never resolved, so it's not too surprising.

How exciting, I think that's three thread babies now with jenny, marenmj and frakkinstein. DH was getting quite broody a few nights ago as apparently he'd seen a family with four children and liked the idea of having four. Fortunately I managed to persuade him in the end that we're getting too old to go through it all over again! (Although I did see a very sweet, very tiny baby at the paediatrician's this morning...)

stranded Nice to see you again; I would have remembered you! Weren't you flying back to the UK on the same day as me in the summer? My trip back to the UK seems like ages ago now; only another couple of months before we'll be flying back for Christmas (but I don't really want to start thinking about Christmas just yet).

i'm quite envious of those of you going back to the UK. we're hoping to go over in jan - i will just have to take dd out of school. due to green card applications, we were 'grounded' for the summer, so have now lost the chance of getting back during holiday time - christmas is soooo expensive & we can't face the fight between the respective parents about who would 'get' us for christmas day!

stranded - is your life as exotic & just like a permanent holiday as i imagine it to be?

i have this dream of finding somewhere idyllic, which is incredibly cheap to live (so i can afford an amazing house & servants), and where i can get home easily, but it's not over run with tourists, where it's really rural, but still has internet & reliable electricity, there's loads of lovely plant life & birds, animals etc, but no nasty creepy crawlies. oh, and perfect weather, and a city with great shops & entertainment/museums etc, just a couple of hours' drive away.

somehow, i think the caribbean is meant to be like that, but i've never been. (except for the city part)

Ha ha ha ha ha just excuse me while I pick myelf off the floor from laughing! I wish it was like this! Your description of what this place would be like if I was here on holiday isn't far wrong - I do have a lovely house and a cleaner and there is electricity and t'internet and lots of plants but also creepy crawlies - but no entertainment, crap shops and certainly no city a couple of hours drive away. In fact there's nowhere a couple of hours drive away - unless you want to drive around the island a few times!

Seriously though I will sound really moany if I carry on so will be very brief. There are great things about living here (I don't have to work so go to the gym three times a week and have almost finished writing a novel, the dd's are at a good private Montessori school which we wouldn't be able to afford at home, I go diving about once a month and Florida is only 3.5hours flight away!) BUT. It's very very very hot and humid so you sweat all day long, changing clothes constantly. Life isn't a holiday - I still have to shop and look after the dc's and ferry them around and think of things to do with them and sort out the washing and organise all the workmnen that are continually coming to the house as everything breaks down here ALL THE TIME.

Anyway I MUST shut up because I know my life is absolutely BRILLIANT compared to most people, But I can't WAIT to go home and start living my normal life again! In the meantime please all come and visit me, I would love some company!

Hi Linzer - that was it, we were flying in on the same day! We had a mostly great holiday apart from I now realise I have to keep dh as far away from my family as possible as it just causes me too much stress. We're going home in December permanently, but before then are off to Orlando next week! Now that I AM excited about!

You must be really looking forward to moving back, stranded - but in the meantime, I would love to come and visit. It sounds like a wonderful place for a holiday, although I can imagine that living there permanently(ish) is no picnic. It gets hot enough for me here in Austria (and too cold in winter); I'm just not cut out for extremes of temperature.

kickass We would probably have to take the DC out of school if we wanted to be back in the UK for Christmas, as school doesn't generally break up here until the 24th December (we did take DD1 out for the last three days of term last year), so won't be going back until after Christmas - still, I know we're lucky to be going back at that time of year at all. The cost probably doesn't compare with transatlantic flights, but it still costs us the best part of 1000 euros to fly back now that we have to pay for seats for all three DC - probably more than 1000 euros if you include the costs of getting to and from the airport at both ends. We definitely couldn't afford to go back more often, even without the constraints of school!

linzer flights back to the uk go up to $2,500 (about 1,800 pounds) for each return ticket around christmas & the summer break!!!!

if i book way in advance, and go at the start of the US summer (so all uk kids are in school, which gets awkward for visiting) then i can get the price down to $1,200 for each of us.

last year i went in feb & the tickets were $800 each.

it used to be cheaper, but just as we moved here delta took over northwest, cut the number of flights in half & upped the prices. i have noticed that they have just started a second flight to heathrow on weekends only, so maybe they will provide more flights now - the current ones involve getting to heathrow at 6 am & other annoying things like that.

stranded i kind of thought it might be like that. i suspect that even if you have enough money to have endless staff, you still have to organise & supervise everything. sadly, it just doesn't seem possible to live without having some kind of responsibility. i may consider a future as a gangster's moll, aren't they just expected to lie around looking beautiful & do very little?

How about one of those girls in bikinis in rap videos kickass? They don't seem to do very much. Does anyone know how to change names for a short period? I thought of a not so great halloween name but I can't find where on the site I can do that.

Also envious of people going back to the UK soon. The cheapest flights I can find for January (not that I can fly then but dh's Mum turns 70) are $950. It's odd that they are cheaper than kickass's as we are that much further away. It's sweet that your dh is broody Linzer.

jenny You need to click on My Mumsnet, then registration details and you can change your nickname there. I was trying to think of a Halloween name, but am sadly lacking in imagination! What does the tad mean in your name, btw?

kickass Ouch, that is expensive. I seem to remember that flights cost around ?1000 when we were in the USA, but there were only three of us then, DH had his flights paid for by the company, and we didn't have to pay full fare for DD1.